Hajji. Executioner.
Scribe.
[Coffee and smoking suppressed, as both were found to be anachronisms.]
[This altered. Eastern men do not speak of their wives to strangers.] | Executioner and Scribe seated on a platform drinking coffee and smoking.
Hajji seated below them entertaining them with amorous stories.
They are all laughing.
Hajji finishes a story.
Executioner says it reminds him of his principal wife.
A slight pause.
The Executioner gives Scribe a look as if to say “To business.”
He says to Hajji—
How would Hajji like to become a great power in the state?
He broaches plan of assassinating the Sultan.
Hajji hesitates.
Executioner unfolds scheme.
There is an audience in half an hour.
Hajji can come as a Fakir. |
| [See play. All of this scene was split in half, and Mansur does not nowsuggest the assassination till at the end of the second half. The reasonis clear: Hajj could not have a love scene (as he does now) if he werebrooding about the assassination. This was altered in rehearsal at thesuggestion of Mr. Grimwood, who played Mansur in England.] | Has told Executioner he could juggle—used to play tricks at his corner when begging.
Hajji could get close to Sultan and kill him.
No danger to Hajji.
As the Guards are under command of Executioner.
Executioner will be there.
But, of course, Hajji must under no condition recognize the Executioner.
Hajji feels doubts.
Executioner fills him full of promises.
Executioner will be made Sultan.
Hajji shall become Executioner.
Executioner off to put on his armour for audience.
Scribe goes with him.
Executioner: “Think it over. If you don’t like it—there is always room for a strangled body in the river.” |
| [Hajji (Alone).] | “So this is why I was pardoned this morning?
Oh, Hajji! What a fool you are!
And you thought your personal charm did it all.” |
Hajji.
Old Woman No II.
[Changed to young slave Miskah. The note becomes a message, with dialogue between Hajji and Miskah] | Door of Hareem opens. Old Woman No. II appears with a note, gives it to Hajji.
Hajji reads it, smiles and nods.
Old Woman disappears. |
| Hajji (Alone). | “After all I cannot be so utterly without charm, if this can happen to me.”
He twirls his moustaches up and looks at himself in the blade of his sword. |
| Old Woman No. II reenters with veiled woman (Executioner’s Wife). Old Woman stands guard. |
Hajji.
Wife. | The Wife has seen him from her window.
As he crossed the courtyard at noon, she lost her heart to him.
Her husband neglects her.
She comes to Hajji for sympathy.
Hajji makes love to her.
She refuses to unveil,—at least, at once.
She makes appointment with him.
To meet him in the Executioner’s Bath at moonrise.
All the women bathe then.
She will leave a little screen unlatched that leads to the furnaces under the baths.
These furnaces reached also from men’s quarters through the door in the Court.
(She points it out to him.)
He can come and see her there in Bath, when the other women are back in the Hareem.
The Executioner never returns from the Sultan till after supper.
They hear a noise.
She withdraws.
Hajji struts about in great glee.
He hears Executioner coming.
He throws himself on his knees and prays. |
Executioner.
Hajji.
Scribe. | Executioner returns armed.
What has Hajji decided?
Hajji says he has been wrestling in prayer.
He cannot make up his mind to kill Sultan, a descendant of the Prophet.
Executioner says he also is a descendant of Prophet.
Hajji is accused of cowardice.
He denies it.
He says he has ties that bind him.
The risk is too great because of his daughter, his daughter, Zira.
He tells about her.
Finally he consents to kill Sultan on one condition.
No matter what happens to him the Executioner must marry the daughter.
The Executioner consents.
Hajji is overjoyed.
He quite forgets his own danger when he thinks his daughter will be the Sultana.
He will hurry off to his daughter’s house,
And have her conveyed to Executioner’s house after sun-down.
Too beautiful to pass through the streets at day time.
Begs for a guard to convey her.
Once he has arranged with her he will come on to young Sultan’s palace,—
“The Sultan who will be dead. Who is dead!”
He hurries off in great exultation. |
| [When the play was written, the mid-afternoon call to prayer wasintroduced here as a Curtain.] | Curtain |